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Posts Tagged ‘Vodafone’

We expect that, by now, your breakfast is probably a hastily consumed coffee with perhaps croissant such is your need to get back to work at breakneck speed.

No fear, check out our breakfast briefing for a quick yet concise overview of news to get you up to speed with day two at Mobile World Congress in an instant.

As always, get in touch with any news, tips or feedback.

Hasta luego.

MAJOR TALKING POINT

– As predicted yesterday Vodafone and Google announced the G2 device, produced by HTC, yesterday. Initial reviews of the device, also know as the Magic, has been positive. Reviews are available at TechRadar and CNET whilst Pocket-Lint has an excellent selection of photos.

HANDSETS

– LG confirmed that its KS360, announced in July, model will run with an Android OS (operating system) and be available in the UK this summer. Click here for more specs from T3.

– Pocket-Lint is doing a great job of covering the show, another of its scoops is the MB400 from Hyundai, a so-called ‘iPod phone’. The device is one of the company’s initial offerings and set to be available in the UK this year.

APPLICATIONS AND CONTENT

– Orange and Sony Ericsson further strengthened their joint content initiative with a 2 year deal that will see a fresh batch of Sony Ericsson multimedia phones with “more fun and easy mobile multimedia services”.

– Yahoo announced that the launch of its Yahoo Mobile service is ‘upcoming’. The service will provide a personalised homepage for a range of devices. The beta is to be available soon although, from initial details, the service looks like nothing more than a portal.

– Adobe announced its plans for Flash to be supported on both the Palm Pre and Nokia Series 60 phones.

– Nokia Nseries handsets will be able to make free Skype-to-Skype voice call and chat starting with the N97.

– Annoying when you have the wrong charger isn’t it? Well the GSMA announced its commitment to an industry-wide standard for chargers for new mobile phones. Backed by a raft of global operators, the group is aiming for change by 2010 with micro-USB mooted as the would-be standard.

– T-Mobile has announced the ten most popular Android apps, see them here at androidcommunity.com

– MySpace has revamped and optimised its mobile site and announced plans to develop bespoke applications for selected Nokia and Palm handsets

NOTEWORTHY REVIEWS

– TechRadar has reviewed the Nokia N86, concluding that it is an improvement on the N85 with the camera and OLED screen alone push it leagues ahead.

– As above, Reviews of the Google G2, aka Vodafone Magic, are available at TechRadar and CNET.

– Acer is a new arrival to mobile devices as it launched 8 Windows Mobile supported devices. Details of the collective are scarce but it does include slider devices, candybars, smartphones, touch-screen phones and one model with a dual-SIM option.

– On a busy day for LG, the Korean firm also released details of an as-yet-unnamed eco-friendly phone which promises to “conveniently harness the sun’s limitless and pollution-free energy”. Initial details are scant but it follows the announcements of eco-phones from Samsung, Blue Earth, and Motorola, Renew.

–Qualcomm went public on details around its ground-breaking Mirasol screen for the Inventec V112 Windows smartphone. The technology using reflected light to cut down on the power consumption of LCD screens on mobile devices. LG has gone public in support for Mirasol.

APPLICATIONS AND SERVICES

–Skyannounced a subscription-based streaming service to allow customers access to music (via their TV, computer or phone). Omnifonewill provide support on the mobile side.

I recently wrote about the problem I’m having with dropped calls. One of the main reasons for the post was to see if the Vodafone eForum is as good as I’ve heard. Well, it seems it is as they responded pretty quickly.

It’s in the comments on the original post, but if you haven’t seen it, this is what they have to say:

– – –

Hi smsisthenewblack

Firstly when looking into this type of problem it can be down to different things including the SIM, The Phone or the network.

I would firstly pop into your local Vodafone store and get them to change your SIM. If tgis doesn’t resolve your issue please register and post on the Vodafone eForum and we will do our best to help you.

Thanks James. I’ll pop into a store over the next week or so and see what happens – and I’ll let you know.

If you’re still listening though, I’d love to know what happens to the people that don’t have access to the web like I do. Do their problems get ignored? Who’s listening to them and how do you get in touch. I think the eForum is a great idea, but it should be available without the ‘e’. How can my mum get in touch if she’s got a problem?

For a while now I’ve been having one major problem with my phone … it keeps dropping calls. It’s happened on a number of occasions, while talking to a number of different people and in a number of different locations. So although that is hardly scientific, my research tells me that it’s pretty likely to be a fault at my end and not theirs. It’s happened on a couple of different phones and also, it only started when I changed provider to Vodafone.

Ironically, one of the reasons I moved to Vodafone was because of the quality of service, many people had told me that the network was very good and that reliability was excellent. Although I hadn’t really noticed a problem before with other networks those issues were obviously important to me, so I moved to Vodafone.

Now, dropping a call and then phoning the person straight back is hardly a life-threatening problem. But it is a bit embarassing, especially when all I did was take a pace to the left (or whatever). And to happen once is something that I wouldn’t really think about. But it happens about once a week and is starting to annoy me.

The only reason I’m writing this post is because I understand that Vodafone has a team of people on the lookout for posts just like this. They then jump into action and apologise (I’m presuming they can’t actually fix the problem as it’s a network issue, although I suppose we could try a new sim to see how that goes for a while). That’s ok for me if they get in touch, but what about my mum who doesn’t write a blog and will just be convinced that mobiles are a bit flaky and if calls don’t work well then why on earth should she trust her phone to download a music file / game / photo etc?